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The Legacy of Empire

The Legacy of Empire:

Napoleon I and III and the Anglo-Italian Circle during the Risorgimento

By Sharon Worley

The Legacy of Empire: I and III and the Anglo-Italian Circle during the Risorgimento

By Sharon Worley

This book first published 2018

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the

Copyright © 2018 by Sharon Worley

All for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-5275-1666-0 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-1666-3

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ...... vii

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter One ...... 9 The Legacy of Napoleon I in and the Emerging Anglo-Italian Style

Chapter Two ...... 73 Napoleon III: Regaining the Reins of Imperial Italy

Chapter Three ...... 91 Women, Revolution and the Anglo-Italian Style: Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Harriet Hosmer

Chapter Four ...... 135 William Wetmore Story: The Anglo-Italian Style and the Fulfilment of Historical Cycles

Chapter Five ...... 151 ’s The Marble Faun and the Coded Map of Revolution

Chapter Six ...... 183 and Vernon Lee: The Conclusion to the Anglo-Italian Style

Bibliography ...... 191

Index ...... 209

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. Intro-1. J. M. W. Turner, Pyramid Tomb of Gaius Cestius, Non- Catholic Cemetery, (1794–7). Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Fig. Intro-2. William Wetmore Story, Angel of Grief (1894). Protestant Cemetery in Rome, IT. Fig. 1-3. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir William (1777). National Portrait Gallery, . Fig. 1-4. Andrea Appiani. Napoleon, (1805). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Fig. 1-5. Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrunm, Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante (1792). National Museums, , UK. Fig. 1-6. , Muse (1812). Musée Fabre, Montpellier, . Fig. 1-7. Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrunn. Countess Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi (1791). MetMuseum, New York. Fig. 1-8. J. M. W. Turner, Death of Nelson (1806–8). Tate Gallery, London. Fig. 1-9. Antonio Canova, Pauline Borghese as (1804–5). Borghese Museum, Rome. Fig. 1-10. Antonio Canova, Helen (1812). Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Fig. 1-11. Francois Gerard, Corinne on Miseno (1817). Musée des Beaux- , Lyon. Fig. 1-12. Thorvaldsen, Lord (1821). Royal Collection Trust, UK. Fig. 1-13. Thorvaldsen, Napoleon (1830). Thorvaldsens Museum. Copenhagen, . Fig. 1-14. Benjamin Robert Haydon, Napoleon at St. Helena (before 1846). National Portrait Gallery, London. Fig. 1-15. Angelo Pizza, Napoleon in a Roman Toga. 1812-14. Palazzo Mocenigo, , IT. Fig. 1-16. of John C. Calhoun by Hiram Powers in City Hall (later removed to Columbia and destroyed when Sherman entered the city). Stereograph. Public Library Collections. Fig. 3-17. Harriet Hosmer, Isabella, Queen of Castile (1893). World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago (current location unknown; presumed destroyed).

viii List of Illustrations

Fig. 3-18. Horatio Greenough, and The Three Graces (1837–40). Boston Athenaeum, MA. Fig. 3-19. Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave (1851). Yale Gallery, New Haven, CT. Fig. 3-20. Hiram Powers, Bust of Maria Antonia, Grand Duchess of (1846). Worcester Museum, MA. Fig. 3-21. Antonio Canova, Tomb Monument of (1808). Santa Croce, , IT. Fig. 4-22. Thomas Crawford, Bust of Charles Sumner (1842). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. Fig. 4-23. Harriet Hosmer, (1854). Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN. Fig. 4-24. Harriet Hosmer, Zenobia in Chains (1859). St. Louis Art Museum, MO. Fig. 4-25. William Wetmore Story, Sappho (1867). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Fig. 4-26. William Wetmore Story, Jerusalem in Her Desolation (1873). High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA. Fig. 4-27. Antonio Canova, Letizia Ramolina Bonaparte (1804–7). , , IT. Fig. 4-28. William Wetmore Story, Semiramis (1873). Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX. Fig. 4-29. William Wetmore Story, Cleopatra (1858; carved 1869). New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fig. 5-30. Roman copy after Praxiteles’ Satyr (ca. 130 CE). Capitoline Museum, Rome, IT. Fig. 5-31. Louise Lander, Portrait bust of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1858). Concord Free Library, MA. Fig. 5-32. , Death of Cleopatra (1876). Smithsonian Museum of American Art, , D.C. Fig. 5-33. Harriet Hosmer, Clasped Hands (1853). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Fig. 5-34. William Sargant, Lady with the Lamp (1913). Santa Croce, Florence, IT.

INTRODUCTION

“I shall not take you to the catacombs,” said Corinne. “Man is part of creation, and finds his own moral harmony in the universe. In the habitual order of fate, violent exceptions may astonish, but they create too much terror to be of service. Let us instead seek the , around which all Protestants who die here find charitable graves.” (Germaine de Staël, 1807)1

To see the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh when we visited it, with autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among the leaves of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, to mark the tombs, mostly of women and young people who were buried there, one might, if one were to die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. (, 1818)2

Shelley's grave is here, buried in roses—a happy grave every way for the very type and figure of the . Nothing could be more impenetrably tranquil than this little corner in the bend of the protecting rampart, where a cluster of modern ashes is held tenderly in the rugged hand of the Past. (Henry James, 1907)3

Italy attracted British and American authors and artists in the nineteenth century who sought to study the past while witnessing modern in the making. The shadow of Napoleon I’s empire never left the nineteenth century and continued to haunt the and wars that followed. The empires of Napoleon I and his nephew, Napoleon III, set the stage for the pendulum swing of time from revolution to its antithesis, empire. The Anglo-Italian style developed as a reaction to these empires, the widespread devastation caused by imperial power, and the monuments it created. , Percy Bysshe Shelley, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Hosmer, William Wetmore Story, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Vernon Lee and Edith Wharton responded to recurring themes in Italian Risorgimento and culture in the post-Napoleonic

1 Corinne to Oswald, Book V. Germaine de Staël. Corinne, or Italy. (1807), trans. Isabel Hill (New York: Armstrong & Co., 1884), 93–4. 2 Letter to , December 1818. Quoted in Nicholas Stanley- Price, The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome (Rome: Non-Catholic Cemetery, 2014). www.Cemeteryrome.it. 3 Henry James, Italian Hours (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909), 270. 2 Introduction

Risorgimento period. Their unique contributions align them with a style that is distinguished by the themes of national independence, feminism, abolition of slavery, and . They perceived their own time in terms of parallel dimensions in which the past and present converged in national histories at home, in America and , and in Italy, their new ideal state. The language of their new nationalism evolved from the chronological study of to the Renaissance and the style of revolution, empire, and , while their perspective was largely shaped by a reactionary contrast between the empires of Napoleon I and Napoleon III, and an ideal state they envisioned .

The prevailing styles in art continued to be neoclassicism and , which represented the iconologies of both empire and . On the one hand, the neoclassical style reinforced empire, and on the , as an official academic style, it continued to represent the ideals of well into the era of the American Civil War. However, when artists and authors responded to the republican hopes of the nation they admired, they continued to follow the style of art and literature established during Napoleon I’s reign. This style, inspired by neoclassicism and romanticism, lent itself to patriotic interpretations from both imperial and republican perspectives, where the same iconology that heralded the greatness and immortality of a modern emperor, Napoleon, in the form of a Greco-Roman god, could also represent the female allegory of . The archetypal quality of neoclassicism lent itself to both academic and monumental art. Archetypes also formed the language of the Anglo-Italian style, while its ideological inspiration came from politics. The politics of empire faced off against the politics of republicanism, and the liberal camp of the Anglo-Italian style referenced its antecedents in the anti-Napoleonic party. The major liberal themes of the Anglo-Italian style—feminism, abolition of slavery, republicanism, and during the Risorgimento—were political platforms that were established during the conflict with Napoleon I and continued during the Second Empire of Napoleon III and the American Civil War.

The subject of American and British artists and authors in Italy has been the focus of numerous monographs and collaborative studies. The activities of major authors and artists were first published in biographies by their contemporaries, such as Henry James in William Wetmore Story and His Friends (1903). Margaret Fuller’s friends, , William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, published an account of her remarkable life in the Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852), which includes reminiscences by her wide circle of friends and acquaintances in The Legacy of Empire 3

Italy, many of whom, such as the Brownings and Storys, are also featured in James’s biography. In the twentieth century, studies of Anglo-Italian artists and authors described Italy as a constant source of creative inspiration. These studies include Guiliana Artom Treyes’s The Golden Ring: The Anglo-Florentines, 1847–1862 (1956) and Van Wyck Brooks’s of Arcadia: American Writers and Artists in Italy, 1760–1915 (1958). These authors underscore the importance of art and politics in their interdisciplinary approach to Anglo-Italian culture where talented individuals travelled to be inspired by Italy’s rich cultural heritage. Italy’s influence on British Romanticism is documented in Stephen Hebron’s The Romantics and Italy.4 An exhibition organized by Theodore Stebbins, curator of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, entitled The Lure of Italy: American Artists and the Italian Experience, 1760–1904 (1992) also demonstrates the importance of Italy to the development of academic art in America. In his study, American Risorgimento: Herman Melville and the Cultural Politics of Italy (2009), Dennis Berthold reveals the profound impact of Italy’s cultural politics on Americans, who perceived an analogy to their own struggles for independence and unity during the Civil War era. For example, Berthold, notes that the Capitol building’s dome was then being completed after the design of the Pantheon in Rome with Italian style frescoes in the interior. American and English Romantics had made their imprint on the cultural map of Italy well before the time of Hawthorne’s visit in the late 1850s. In 1835, American transcendentalist ’s “Travel Letters from Italy,” in which he combined culture with the harsh reality of revolutionary politics, were published by the New York Post. In addition, Berthold demonstrates that the fleeing revolutionary politics in Italy helped to establish a cross-cultural connection which combined revolutionary fervour for Risorgimento politics with cultural exchanges. Thus, the history of Anglo-Italian culture in Italy is intricately bound to its political map. Recent studies have focused on parallels between the American Civil War and slavery and the struggles of the Italian Risorgimento. Melissa Dabakis’s A Sisterhood of Sculptors: American Artists in Nineteenth-century Rome (2014) approaches the topic from the perspective of emerging feminism as well as the political context of the American Civil War and abolition of slavery. For both American and English artists and authors, Italy was a primary source of inspiration in its classical antecedents, history and monuments of the , and Renaissance art literature of the humanist movement. Nathalia Wright’s

4 Discovering Literature: The Romantics and the Victorians (London: The British Library, 2014), https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-romantics-and- italy. 4 Introduction

American Authors in Italy, the Discoverers, Allston to James (1965; 2016) is one example of a survey of American authors in Italy. Numerous anthologies have also been published in the last two decades about Anglo- Italian artists and writers, such as Roman Holidays: American Writers and Artists in Nineteenth-Century Italy (2002), Unfolding the South: Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers and Artists in Italy (2003), and Transatlantic Conversations: Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Encounters with Italy and the Atlantic World (2017) offer insights into a broad range of topics on Anglo-Italian culture.

Foreigners visiting Italy for the Grand Tour found not only the vestiges of classical antiquity, but discovered the contributions of authors and artists who created the neoclassical style. The neoclassical style was first defined by critic and art historian, Johann Joachim Winckelmann and the art of Mengs and . However, the Grand Tour coincided with major political shifts that engaged the Anglo-Italians in the , the Napoleonic Empire, and the subsequent Risorgimento. The later Anglo-Italians met the artists and authors who had participated in creating the style of the Napoleonic empire, or who opposed it. In his Dream of Arcadia: American Artists and Writers in Italy, 1760–1915, Van Wyck Brooks writes that , author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, visited the studio of Italian sculptor, Antonio Canova where the sculptor was creating of Napoleon and his family, including his mother, Letizia, Pauline, and that his sculpture of Napoleon depicted the emperor, “naked in the style of the ancients.” Irving also met Germaine de Staël, who was in Italy researching her novel, Corinne.5 George Ticknor travelled to Rome in 1817 and visited the salons of the Bonapartes, including Letizia, Pauline, and Lucien. Ticknor also visited the salon of Staël’s friend, Louise Stolberg in Florence where Vittorio Alfieri’s patriotic neoclassical were read aloud to guests, and when Ticknor returned to Florence in 1836 he occupied Alfieri’s former suite.6The Anglo-Italian style draws upon the metaphors of history to discern and shape the future course of Italian destiny and . Americans traced their democratic roots to classical antiquity and the , and chose Roman styles for the portrayal of their great leaders. This dialogue between the classical past and modern history was largely inspired by the Napoleonic Empire, which had popularized the use of Roman-style monuments to signify imperialism and immortality. American politicians wanted their

5 Van Wyck Brooks, The Dream of Arcadia: American Writers and Artists in Italy, 1760–1915 (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1958), 14, 16. 6 Brooks, Dream of Arcadia, 28–9, 70. The Legacy of Empire 5 memory to be clothed in the greatest epoch of civilization to ensure their own immorality and the historic destiny of America. Since America inspired through the example of its promise of fulfilment, it also appealed to , the greatest of which in recent history was Napoleon, who had successfully grafted the iconology of Ancient Rome onto his own modern imperial aspirations.

The relationship between empire and revolution was established in Italy by artists who served the satellite kingdoms ruled by Napoleon’s sisters. Pauline, married to Italian Prince Camillo Borghese, Elisa, Queen of Etruria, and Caroline, Queen of Naples, aspired to rule their satellite kingdoms as patrons of the arts. They initiated a neoclassical dialogue on the conflict between royalty and republicanism which was expressed through ideal allegory. Artists, such as Canova, rose to the occasion by giving ethereal virtues allegorical form in marble sculptures. Stolberg’s commission a tomb monument in 1804 for her lover, the Italian patriot and playwright, Alfieri, represents an allegory of Italy as a mourning queen in exile (like Stolberg herself), wearing a mural crown representing the city of Florence (3-21). Thanks largely to Alfieri and Stolberg’s contribution, the dream of was shared by later Americans and Europeans who continued to read into the poet and sculptor’s work metaphors and symbols of and ideal republican state. The republican dream of liberty was projected onto Italy and helped to foster sympathy for the Risorgimento cause among those Americans and British who flocked to Italy in the decades following the Congress of Vienna (1815). The cultural and America complemented one another. Italy preserved the classical traditions upon which republicanism was founded. It also represented the current struggle to establish around the world. When artists of the were commissioned to give form to the foundation of republicanism through the medium of marble, they turned to Italy for neoclassical models and artists who had kept the tradition alive.

From the perspective of , the actors of the Anglo-Italian style conspicuously marked their contributions in the form of cemetery monuments which placed their lives within a historical continuum of empire to revolution. They reflected upon the tombs and monuments of Ancient Rome and the Renaissance and added their own to modern history of the Risorgimento. Italian poet, ’s poem, “Sepulchres” sets the tone for this meditation upon marble and empire in the modern transformation from empire to republic. Written in 1807 under the patronage of Stolberg, Foscolo’s poem anticipates the completion of the cycle of empire to republic by marking the graves of the great men of Italy in Santa Croce Cathedral, 6 Introduction

Florence.7 The commemoration of the nation’s great men can be compared to the recent French Revolution when the desecration of the tombs of French kings and queens at St. Denis and Notre Dame by rioting mobs was followed by the interment of the Great Men of France in the Pantheon in , including and Jean Jacques Rousseau, as well as the recent martyrs of the revolution, Marat and Mirabeau.

Foscolo enumerates the great men buried in Santa Croce, including Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli, and Alfieri, whose tomb monument Stolberg commissioned from Canova in 1806. Stolberg’s own tomb was also added after her death in 1824. And later, the tombs of ’s daughter Charlotte (d. 1836, m. Napoleon Louis, brother of Napoleon III), and her mother Julie Clary (sister of Napoleon’s lover, Desiree Clary) were added. The tomb of the famous opera composer was erected after his death in 1868, while a tribute to Dante was added in the nineteenth century, and Foscolo’s remains were returned from England and his tomb monument was included in the 1930s.8 This tradition of commemoration placed the unique accomplishments of the modern age within the context of Italy’s cultural history. Their monuments marked the achievements of republican dissent in the spectre of Napoleonic tyranny. The remarkable achievements of Galileo and Michelangelo which shaped the Renaissance world initiated a dialogue among nineteenth century who promoted the republican cause. Their monuments represent their participation in the events surrounding the Italian Risorgimento.

The Protestant Cemetery in Rome can also be compared to Santa Croce since it contains the tombs of some of the most illustrious Anglo-Italian authors and artists. Since the forbade the burial of non- Catholics in Catholic churches and graveyards, a separate site was established near the pyramid of a high Roman official, Gaius Cestius (18– 12 BCE) for the burial of Protestants. It soon became a place where the Romantics, like Shelley and J. M. W. Turner, contemplated the ruins of antiquity (see Fig. 1-1). The Protestant Cemetery was founded by the Stuart court who moved to Rome in exile at the time of James III. Protestant members of the court received permission from Clement IX in 1718

7 Sharon Worley, Louise Stolberg’s Florentine Salon and Germaine de Staël’s Coppet Circle: The Politics of Patronage, Neoclassicism and the Code of Freedom in Napoleonic Italy (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2014). 8 Tombs and Memorial Monuments in Santa Croce, Florence, IT: http://www.santacroceopera.it/en/ArchitetturaEArte_SepolcriMemorie.aspx#40d3f 214-f895-4fca-9cfe-8fe5961ffd8f The Legacy of Empire 7 to establish their cemetery near the pyramid of Cestius.9 The son of Catholic James III, Charles Stuart, known as the Last Pretender to the British throne, also converted to Protestantism and the Anglican Church shortly before leading the failed Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Afterwards, he fled to Rome where he and his brother Henry received asylum from the papacy. The historical legacy of the Stuarts in Rome commemorated in 1819 by Canova’s cenotaph memorial dedicated to the last heirs to the Stuart dynasty, Charles and Henry, for St. Peter’s Basilica. It is located near the entrance across from Michelangelo’s Pieta. Henry became a cardinal, and Charles married Stolberg in 1772, but she left him Alfieri in 1780.10

The English romantic and Percy Bysshe Shelley were buried there after pouring out their prose over the revolutionary upheavals of Italy in the post-Napoleonic era. Goethe’s young son is also buried there, as is Shelley’s. Numerous artists and sculptors are buried there, including Harriet Hosmer’s mentor, the British sculptor .11 The American sculptor and author William Story and his wife are also buried there beneath his Angel of Grief (1894) (see Fig. 1-2). He wrote of this last work: “I am always asking myself if she knows it and if she can see it. It represents the Angel of Grief, in utter abandonment, throwing herself with drooping wings and hidden face over a funeral altar. It represents what I feel … Prostration.”12 Their tombs are a fitting testament to the historical cycle the Anglo-Italians witnessed. The monuments left a in time, and a marker in space for reflection by future generations. The Anglo-Italians came to Italy seeking inspiration from the artistic cultural foundations of Europe and found themselves embroiled in its most dramatic revolutions. As artists, they became observers of time and place, and thrust their energies into the service of a new ideal state, one which recoiled from the abuses of empire.

9 Stanley-Price, The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome, 22–3. 10 Marchesa Vitelleschi, A Court in Exile: and the Romance of the Countess d’Albanie (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1903/Kessinger Legacy Reprints). 11 Stanley-Price, The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome, 77, 81. 12 Quoted in Stanley-Price, The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome, 60.

CHAPTER ONE

THE LEGACY OF NAPOLEON I IN ITALY AND THE EMERGING ANGLO-ITALIAN STYLE

The history of English and American authors and artists in Italy during the Risorgimento is joined to the history of the Napoleonic Empire and its legacy. The two opposing of empire and democracy continued to impact art and literature through politics. Artists travelling to Italy were struck with the as well as the history of politics, which appeared to unfold before their very eyes as they took in the sights and sounds of old Europe. Writing more than a century after the first Napoleonic invasions of Italy, Edith Wharton identified revolution as the distinguishing feature of the Anglo-Italian style when she published her novel The Valley of Decision. Set in , it is a fictional portrayal of the revolutionary events that swept across the Italy around the time of Napoleon I’s invasion in 1796. The family villa owned by Wharton’s protagonist, Odo, the Duke of Pianura, is based upon the Villa Pisani located on the Brenta River in Italy. Wharton’s rich descriptions of the villa captured the attention of the editors at Century Magazine who proposed that she write an to accompany illustrations of Italian gardens by Maxfield Parrish. Wharton’s Italian Villas and their Gardens appeared in 1904 with an introduction to the Italian edition by the Anglo-Italian author and critic, Vernon Lee, who also arranged much of the itinerary of Wharton’s tour.13 Wharton’s novel closed the period of the Anglo-Italian style during which English-speaking artists and authors flocked to Italy to be inspired by the great art and history of the past.14 However, Italy also contained a microcosm of the social hierarchy and revolutions which had rocked Europe

13 Vivian Russell, Edith Wharton’s Italian Gardens (Boston: Bullfinch Press, 2000), 14-17; Edith Wharton and Maxfield Parrish, illustrator, Italian Villas and their Gardens (NY: The Century Co., 1904; reprint Classical America by Da Capo Press, 1976). 14 Janet Beer and Avril Horner, “‘The Great Panorama: Edith Wharton as Historical Novelist,” The Modern Language Review 110 (1) (2015): 69–84; Vance Williams, “Edith Wharton’s Italian Mask,” in The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton, ed. Millicent Bell (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 10 Chapter One from the Ancient Roman Empire to the French Revolution. While taking the Grand Tour of Italy, English-speaking artists and authors discovered an ongoing cycle of empire to revolution to empire, initiated under Napoleon I, which was fulfilled in the Risorgimento and unification of the Italian city states under a constitutional in 1871. Though the Risorgimento ended with a constitutional monarchy under Victor Emmanuel II in 1871, the monarchy itself was not abolished until June 2, 1949. The Day of the Republic is a now holiday in Italy celebrated on June 2.

According to Wharton’s plot, the Duke of Pianura, Odo Valsecca, attempts to introduce constitutional reforms into his principality in an effort to quell revolutionary fervour. When his lover, the beautiful Fulvia Vivaldi, is killed by an assassin’s bullet intended for him, he responds by revoking his new and liberal reforms. In the opening chapter of the novel, Odo contemplates the philosophical and literary currents of his time. Set in 1774, he discusses the new romantic appreciation of nature, the egalitarian ideas of Rousseau, the patriotic plays of Alfieri, and the reality of political censorship. An analogy between beauty and temptation evoked by the contemplation of his daughter’s beauty and cherry blossoms leads to his first and final lesson on social privilege and an antiquated feudal social hierarchy. He concludes that the cherry blossoms owned by the monks should be taxed to benefit poor tax-paying citizens. Odo being thoroughly modern in his outlook, these ideas were accepted by Wharton as commonplace, and the foundation of her own modern civilization. The novel is replete with references to the culture and society of the French Revolution. Odo begins his life as a poor relation raised by peasants before assuming the title of duke, which permits his rise to luxury and privilege. His experiences educate him in the rhetoric of the revolution as a result of experiencing the deprivation of the working classes. The revolutionary tenor permeates the novel. For example, a hunchback servant on his mother’s estates introduces himself as Brutus, a killer of , and points to a statue resembling Brutus with a knife drawn. 15 The ducal palace of Pianura, on the other hand, contains the luxuries of the Italian ruling classes, such as a wing designed by Carlo Borromini, architect of the new Saint Peter’s Basilica. The novel succinctly summarizes those forces that shaped the Italian Risorgimento, including the conflict created by aristocratic class privileges. Never fully resolved, the later Risorgimento also failed to

15 Wharton, The Valley of Decision (NY: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1902), vol. I, “The Old Order,” 22. The Legacy of Napoleon I in Italy and the Emerging Anglo-Italian Style 11 remove the Italian from power and distribute wealth equally in accordance with Jacobin .

William Hamilton, Lady Hamilton, and Horatio Nelson in Naples

English-speaking tourists were attracted to Italy as part of the Grand Tour in the eighteenth century. Here, they studied the remnants of classical antiquity first hand and examined the monuments of Imperial Rome. The rediscovery of the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum attracted additional interest since the artefacts revealed new insights into Roman life and fashions. However, the style of neoclassicism would also become the language of revolution and empire. Appointed as the British ambassador to Naples in 1764, Hamilton was at the location of the most important excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum. He contributed to the movement by publishing scholarly volumes on Roman and Etruscan vases. The rediscovery of the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius was the most significant discovery. It offered new insights into Roman life and the classical style. Hamilton also contributed geological observations to the Royal Society in England with his studies of Mount Vesuvius, which continued to spew lava and occasionally erupt during this period. Lady Emma Hamilton contributed to the Anglo-Italian culture through her famous “attitudes,” in which she assumed the poses of tableaus from famous archetypes and classical tragic heroines. Lady Emma’s portraits were commissioned from leading artists working in Italy such as Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein and Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun.

Hamilton and Admiral Horatio Nelson directly participated in the events surrounding the Napoleonic invasion of Italy. Napoleon I began his career as a general for the French Republic and successfully invaded Italy by crossing the like Hannibal and Charlemagne before him in. He was welcomed as a hero of the republican revolution who would liberate Italy from Austrian rule. In France Napoleon was subsequently elected First Consul in 1799; after a coup, he declared himself consul for life the following year, and in 1804 assumed the title of emperor. In 1805 the was created from the states of and the Emilia Romagna with Napoleon as king (Fig. 1-4).16 As the French Empire spread

16 Peter Hicks, “How Napoleon became the King of Italy,” Napoleon.org. Retrieved from: https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/how-napoleon- became-king-of-italy/ 12 Chapter One further south in the peninsula, Tuscany, Naples and the were also annexed between 1806-08.

Naples was a strategic location for the British and they continued to support the Bourbon King of the Two Sicilies during the Revolution of 1799. John Acton established the British Navy in Naples and became the Secretary of the Navy, War, and Finances in Naples. He was also reputed to be Queen Maria Carolina’s lover. His development of the British navy at Naples also contributed the state’s bankruptcy, thereby setting the stage for the ensuing Jacobin revolution, which was ultimately defeated with the support of Nelson and the British navy.17 As a lady-in-waiting, Emma became a confidante to Queen Maria Carolina. Nelson facilitated the royal party’s escape from Naples to when the Jacobin French Revolution spread to Italy. He also engaged the French forces of Napoleon I in Italy before dying heroically at the Battle of Trafalgar aboard the Victory.

Hamilton’s promotion of the Anglo-Italian style through his collecting activities can be ranked among the early art historical studies of classical antiquity, such as Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s History of Greek Sculpture and his work for Cardinal Alessandro Albani. Hamilton specialized in Etruscan vases and published lengthy studies in English and French about his collections. His first of four volumes appeared under the title Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities from the of the Honourable William Hamilton, His British Majesty’s Envoy Extraordinary at the Court of Naples (1768). The second volume was dedicated to Winckelmann. Hamilton’s contribution helped to spread the style of neoclassicism and interest in the Grand Tour as an activity for English-speaking tourists. He also made studies of Mount Vesuvius, published as Observations on Mt. Vesuvius, Mt, Etna and other Volcanoes (London, 1772).18 Hamilton studied live streams of lava and periodic eruptions which made his studies all the more compelling to those who followed him. But Hamilton’s official occupation as the British envoy addressed the present dynamic forces of empire and revolution.

Hamilton’s fame spread when he visited Rome, where the pope requested a private audience with the famous connoisseur and diplomat.

17 John Davis, Naples and Napoleon: and the European Revolutions, 1780–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 24. 18 David Constantine, Fields of Fire: a Life of Sir William Hamilton (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001), 32–44; Brian Fothergill, Sir William Hamilton: Envoy Extraordinary (London: Faber & Faber, 1969); Kate Williams, England’s Mistress, Lady Emma Hamilton (London: Ballantine Books, 2006). The Legacy of Napoleon I in Italy and the Emerging Anglo-Italian Style 13

While at church in Rome, Hamilton also saw the last pretender to the British throne Charles Stuart, who was given asylum by the papacy and lived in ignominious secrecy with his wife Louise Stolberg as the and Countess of Albany. Hamilton’s portraits from this early period portray him as a scholar (see Fig. 3) and a diplomat (see Fig. 4). Hamilton also commissioned numerous portraits of Emma. She was painted three times by Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun in 1792 as a Bacchante with Mount Vesuvius in the distance (see Fig. 1-5), and in one painting she is represented holding one of Hamilton’s Ancient Greek vases.19

Following his victories against Napoleon and death aboard the HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson’s name was as well-known as Napoleon’s and Wellington’s. Nelson was killed aboard his ship the HMS Victory, and his death was immortalized by painters including Benjamin West (1805, National Museums of Liverpool) and Turner’s Death of Nelson aboard the HMS Victory (1806, Tate Gallery, London) (see Fig. 1-8). Like Napoleon, he was depicted in an apotheosis. Scott Pierre Nicolas Legrand's Apotheosis of Nelson painted before 1819 shows his ascending to heaven with allegorical figures, including Fame, Britannia, Neptune, and Hercules (National Maritime Museum, London). The poet wrote an obituary essay from Naples, Lord Byron referred to Nelson as “Britannia’s god of war” in his poem (1819), and included Nelson in his essay “On Heroes and Hero Worship” (1840).20

As the British ambassador, Hamilton’s tenure in Naples spanned the Jacobin revolution that briefly removed the Bourbons from power prior to the Napoleonic invasions. Later historians of the Risorgimento, such as , regarded this episode in the history of Naples as a pivotal event in the Risorgimento struggle against foreign and feudal powers.21 During the revolution, the allies worked to defeat the French, and when they lost the revolution, Nelson facilitated the escape of the royal party to , Sicily after the city of Naples fell to the French. As strong allies of the Bourbon monarchy, the Hamiltons were less inspired by the Jacobin claims to democratic reforms than the neoclassical interest in all things

19 Flora Fraser, Emma, Lady Hamilton (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987); Quintin Colville (ed.) and Kate Williams, Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity (London: Thames & Hudson/National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 2016). 20 Andrew Lambert, Nelson: Britannia’s God of War (London: , 2005). 21 Benedetto Croce, La Rivoluzione Napoletana del 1799 : biografie, racconti, ricerche. Terza Edizione Aumentata. (Bari, Italy: Gius. Laterza & Figli. Breviario di estetica, 1912). 14 Chapter One classical and Roman. Maria Carolina was a member of the Austrian Habsburg Dynasty and sister of Marie Antoinette. Following the execution of her sister and Louis XVI by the Jacobins in 1793, the Bourbon monarchy joined the coalition against France. They were encouraged by Nelson’s victory over the French at the in and declared war on France in 1799. King Ferdinand invaded Rome, which had recently been restored to Papal rule by the occupying French, but was forced to retreat by the French. In Naples, massacres of those suspected of republican sympathies were carried out by the —poor beggars who remained loyal to the king. When the French invaded Naples, the short-lived was proclaimed on January 21, 1799.22

Naples emerged as a symbol of the conflict between monarchy and democracy. European monarchs were determined to save the principality from the encroaching revolutionary movement. Thus, when the Bourbons received the support of the British, Austrians, Russians, and Turks, Ferdinand was able to recapture the city within months. The republican traitors were executed and a period of intense oppression and censorship followed. One of Ferdinand’s officers, Admiral — who joined the republican party, and commanded their naval forces against the British and Neapolitans—was tried and hanged on Nelson’s ship on June 30, 1799. The fall of the Parthenopean Republic inspired the Risorgimento movement. In 1801, published his “Historical Essay Concerning the Late Revolution in Naples” in . A member of the republican government, he escaped after his arrest and joined the growing number of Italian exiles who supported the bourgeoning Risorgimento movement.23

The impact of the revolution in Naples continued to inspire both Anglo- Italian artists and authors, as well as the who promoted Italian independence. The Jacobins circulated propaganda during the revolution which indicted the Bourbon monarchy. Writing her preface in 1901 for the London publisher John Murray, Constance Giglioli observes that she sought to bring to life the “lights and shadows” and the “colouring” that had scarcely been “dimmed by 100 years.” She aspired to write a revisionist history for the English, who had regarded the revolution in Naples as a “mere background to an episode in the life of Nelson.” She wanted to

22 Harold Acton, The Bourbons of Naples. (London: Prion Books, 1998), 365-480; George Romani, The Neapolitan Revolution of 1820-21 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978), 3-34. 23 Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 95–8. The Legacy of Napoleon I in Italy and the Emerging Anglo-Italian Style 15 illustrate the wrongs of the Bourbon court, which were facilitated by English intervention. For example, Giglioli cites a quote by the French ambassador, Baron Alquier, who in 1803 said of Queen Maria Carolina: “The life of the queen is nothing but a long series of errors and regrets … Tormented by the desire to govern, her gifts, which would have been very remarkable if she had remained within the sphere allotted to a woman, have degenerated into a habit of meddling which has been nothing short of disastrous for Europe.”24 Bourbon rule in Sicily and Naples was protected by the British navy. The British naval presence in Italy assured the defeat of the republic as long as Britain sided with the Bourbons against the French. During the Napoleonic occupation of Italy, Britain continued to maintain a defensive posture against the French. Naples had been cultivated as a British port for its operations in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and North Africa. During the Napoleonic occupation of Naples, Maria Carolina and Ferdinand IV ruled from Messina and Palermo, Sicily, and blamed the British for not protecting their rights to Naples. Britain responded by urging them to accept a constitutional monarchy to help subvert Napoleonic rule in Naples by appealing to republican sympathies. When the king and queen refused, Lord William Bentinck, who had been appointed as the British governor in 1810, forced the transference of the Bourbon monarchy to the prince, Frances Vicar General with the acceptance of a constitutional monarchy. Following the defeat of Napoleon I in 1815, Ferdinand IV regained control of Naples and promptly abolished the constitution that the Bourbon monarchy had been forced to accept under the British in 1812.25

Louise Stolberg, Germaine de Staël, and Napoleon’s Sisters in Italy

Louise Stolberg circulated vehement anti-Napoleonic diatribes through her correspondence with friends and the artists and authors she patronized. Her marriage to the last Stuart Pretender, Charles Stuart, attracted the attention of biographers who traced her life from her tempestuous marriage to Charles Stuart to the great nationalist playwright Vittorio Alfieri. Her contribution to the Anglo-Italian style and the Risorgimento movement is documented by her biographer, Violet Paget (1856–1937), a feminist who took the pseudonym of Vernon Lee. Lee recognized themes in Stolberg’s life and work which reverberate throughout the Anglo-Italian movement; she was

24 Constance Stocker Giglioli, Naples in 1799: An Account of the Revolution of 1799 and of the Rise and Fall of the Parthenopean Republic (London: John Murray, 1903), 17. 25 Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 268–70. 16 Chapter One one of the first biographers to focus on Stolberg’s anti-Napoleonic activities in Florence. Lee was born in France to British expatriates and moved to Florence, Italy, as a teenager. Her assessment of Stolberg contributed to the Anglo-Italian style by analysing Stolberg’s circle of illustrious authors and artists, including Foscolo, Francois Xavier Fabre, and Canova from the perspective of the political conflict between Napoleon and Italian nationalism. Published in 1884, Lee’s ground-breaking biography The Countess of Albany was also important in establishing the author as an Anglo-Italian feminist who reassessed Stolberg from the feminist perspective. Lee portrays the heroism of Stolberg who flees an abusive husband, Charles Stuart, to unite with her lover, Alfieri. Stolberg rejected marriage and remained childless. She asserted her independence through her endeavours as an anti-Napoleonic salon hostess and as the editor of Alfieri’s posthumously collected works. She was also an important friend and patron to Florentine artists and authors whose works demonstrate a nationalist affinity.26

Lee was a prolific author, and friend of John Singer Sargent and Henry James. As a teenager, she lived in Rome, where she socialized with the Sargents and Storys, moving permanently to Florence in 1880. In Paris, she lived on the fashionable Rue de Clichy, the same street where Staël hosted her historic political Parisian salon. Lee first became acquainted with the revolutionary through the exiled author and patriot, John Ruffini, whose brother had been romantically involved with her friend and mentor Henrietta Jenkin. Her female mentors, Jenkin and Cornelia Turner, also introduced her to the romantic poet Shelley. These authors provided the revolutionary context for the Anglo-Italian style which Lee introduces in her biography of Stolberg. Jenkin had met Ruffini’s brother Agostino while he was in exile in for his revolutionary association with Mazzini’s Giovane Italia. Ruffini encouraged Lee to write her first essay on eighteenth- century opera and Metastasio. In Euphorion, Lee recalls her magical years travelling in Italy with the young John Singer Sargent:27 “Those genuine feelings of those youthful days of mine … the crumbling villas … the peasants talking like W.W. Story’s Roba di Roma … a land where the past haunted on …”28 She attempts to come to terms with the modern fascination for the world of Dante, Machiavelli, and the Borgias in which morality is

26 Vernon Lee, The Countess of Albany (London: W. H. Allen, 1884). 27 Vineta Colby, Vernon Lee: a Literary Biography (Charlottesville: University of Press, 2003), 15–18. 28 Quoted in ibid., 18; Vernon Lee, For : Five Unlikely Stories (London: John Lane, Bodley Head, 1927), xlii–xliii. The Legacy of Napoleon I in Italy and the Emerging Anglo-Italian Style 17 depraved yet produces great art. She observes that Italians of the Renaissance were essentially modern, like her contemporaries, and had revived the institutions of Ancient Greece. However, Lee cautions that “almost in proportion as all these advantages developed, the moral vitality of the Italians was rapidly decreasing, and horrible moral gangrene beginning to spread; liberty was extinguished … every free state became subject to a despot, always unscrupulous and often infamous …”29 This thesis is restated throughout her study, though she avoids the more recent connection with the historical map of the Risorgimento, which likewise produces a “mixture of admiration and terror” in the foreign observer, where “we the people of the nineteenth century are filled with the same feeling … as we watch the strange ebullition of the Renaissance, seething with good and evil, as we contemplate the enigmatic picture drawn by the puzzled historian, the picture of a people moving on towards civilization and towards chaos.”30 Lee asserts that the modern historian has conflated the Elizabethan dramatists’ portrayal of Italy, such as Shakespeare’s Montagues and Capulets from Romeo and Juliet, with the real historical world of the Renaissance, and she concludes that art and history, or at least morality, should remain separate from art. She asserts that the ideal beauty of Michelangelo should be separated from the immorality of the Medici and Machiavelli. Yet, the moral perversions she perceives in the Italians of the Renaissance also apply to the recent history of the Napoleonic and Austrian occupations, as well as the American institution of slavery. The great neoclassical and romantic artworks which represented the highest moral ideals coexisted with the evils of slavery, oppression of women, and foreign imperial conquests. Perhaps this is the striking parallel with her own century that she observed.

Lee’s next topic fully explicates the Renaissance world in the nationalist revival of Dante and contributions by Italy’s greatest neoclassical poet and revolutionary patriot, Alfieri, who explored the depths of the human soul through his tragedies. According to Lee, when Alfieri addressed the subject of human evil, “he determined to be the poet who should make men ashamed of being slaves and shamed of being tyrants.” Italy provided clear examples in history and literature for these lessons.31 Lee’s association with the Anglo-Italian circle at the close of the Risorgimento allowed her to reflect on its most salient features while contributing to the style of its later

29 Vernon Lee, Euphorion (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1884), 28–9. 30 Ibid., i: 29; Colby, Vernon Lee, 70; Sondeep Kandola, Vernon Lee (Tavistock: Northcote House, 2010). 31 Lee, The Countess of Albany, 85–6. 18 Chapter One participants. Being a historian who analysed the of the proto- Risorgimento was an appropriate contribution to the style that encompassed the revolutionary period. When she met she made such an impression on him that he included a reference to her name in his poem, “Inapprehensiveness” from Asolando (1889), in which he recognized her contribution to the Anglo-Italian style and writings on aesthetics. The poem’s speakers reveal her contribution to the field as well as her gender32:

“No, the book Which noticed how the wall-growths wave,” she said, Was not by Ruskin.” I said, “Vernon Lee.”

Though known primarily as a novelist, she demonstrated her knowledge of eighteenth-century and the Arcadians with the publication of her first work, Studies of the Eighteenth-Century in Italy (1880).33 She mentions the patriotic Alfieri, and provides a detailed history of the improvissatore, and the improvisatrice Corilla Olympica, on whom Staël’s scene of Corinne receiving the Crown at Capitoline Hill from the Arcadians is based. Lee begins her study with a detailed history of the Lumiere society of Arcadia which Staël actually joined when she travelled to Rome to research her novel. Lee traces their earliest meeting site to a field located just behind the Castel St. Angelo. She justifies her choice of subject by arguing that in order to understand the work of Alfieri and his peers, one must understand the period which preceded them. Her study traces the history of from 1680 to 1790 and the period of Alfieri and his neoclassical style. She describes Alfieri “in his semi-military dress, with the collar of his own Order of Homer, glaring fiercely round him, his red hair waving as if in the draught of a furnace …” She claims that Alfieri inspired a contempt for the papacy, “with his desire to return to antiquity and freedom, and paganism.”34 Thus, Lee’s writings frame the achievements of the first generation of poet patriots within a historical perspective, and identify those themes that later attracted Anglo-Italians to the Risorgimento at mid-century.

Stolberg entertained a cultural coterie linked to Germaine de Staël’s salon, which included the greatest Italian artists and authors of the . Stolberg’s romantic relationship with the fierce patriot

32 Colby, Vernon Lee, 82. 33 Vernon Lee, Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy [1880] (New York: Da Capo Press, 1978), 48–9, 90–3. 34 Ibid., 6, 19, 25–6. 96. The Legacy of Napoleon I in Italy and the Emerging Anglo-Italian Style 19 and playwright Vittorio Alfieri resulted in the establishment an anti- Napoleonic salon in Florence at their villa, from which she observed and commented on each phase of the Napoleonic occupation to Napoleon’s internment on Elba Island and subsequent escape and defeat by Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo.35 Stolberg chose as her personal symbol the classical muse by Antonio Canova (1812) (Musée Fabre, Montpellier) (see Fig. 1-6), copies of which were later awarded by her friend, the great neoclassical sculptor, to the British politicians and generals Wellington, William Hamilton, and Castlereagh as trophies commemorating their efforts in defeating Napoleon.36

When Napoleon placed his sisters Elise, Pauline, and Caroline on the thrones of Italy, he appropriated a history and iconology of three powerful dynasties: the Austrian Habsburgs, the Roman Borgheses, and the Neapolitan Bourbons. Each Bonaparte queen appropriated this royal lineage in creating an imperial satellite court culture through her patronage. The desire to graft these ancient virtues onto contemporary ruling Italian aristocratic families continued throughout the Risorgimento period in which nobles resisted change by promoting their past classical heritage. The Bonapartes living in in Italy, acquired the demeanour of Italian aristocrats, imitating their tastes in lavish villas, art patronage and fashion. The neoclassical in Rome, for example, was renovated to aggrandize a later descendant, Alessandro Torlonia (1800–86) with fresco cycles of scenes by Francesco Coghetti of classical mythology and history, including Alexander the Great, who represented Alessandro. Leading contemporary sculptors Antonio Canova and created classical reliefs and sculptures for the villa to celebrate the ancestry of the noble family.37 After Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, the Bonapartes sold their French estates and transferred their wealth to Italy when they moved there permanently.38

The skills of the leading neoclassical sculptors Canova and Thorvaldsen were employed by Giovanni and his son Alessandro Torlonia to recapture the grandiose style and lineage of the ancient world in the neoclassical Villa

35 See also Anne de Lacretelle, La Comtesse d’Albany (Monaco: Rocher, 2008). 36 Christopher M. S. Johns, Antonio Canova and the Politics of Patronage in Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 192; Worley, Louise Stolberg’s Florentine Salon, 149. 37 Alberta Campitelli, Villa Torlonia Guida (Rome: Commune of Rome, Electa, 2007), 11–78, 183–90. During WWII, fascist dictator chose the Villa Torlonia as his official residence in Rome. 38 F. Charles Roux, Rome Asile des Bonaparte (Paris: Hachette, 1952), 42-45. 20 Chapter One

Torlonia, built in 1806. Thorvaldsen was commissioned to create marble statues of the muses for the salon of Alexander where Coghetti’s heroic fresco cycles of Alexander the Great were located. Frescoes of Antony and Cleopatra in an adjacent salon reclaimed the greatness of Ancient Rome for its latter-day descendants, along with the busts of emperors Caracalla and Adriano. Frescoes of Italy’s great creative geniuses Dante and his heroine Beatrice, , Galileo, Tasso, Ariosto, and Alfieri were included in the library, while frescoes of the Three Graces and Parnassus with and the Nine Muses lorded over the ballroom.39

The relationship between Napoleon’s sisters, their courts, and the arts sets the tone for these later Italian aristocrats who promoted the neoclassical style well into the mid-nineteenth century. This eliminated the distinction between classical identity and modern privilege. In the painting by Pietro Benvenuti entitled Elisa Bonaparte Among Her Court Artists (1813, Musée National des Chateaux Versailles) the Napoleonic Etrurian court in Florence is shown admiring the official bust of Elisa (1808, marble, Museo Napoleonico, Rome) by . A gigantic sculpture of a Roman magistrate holding a scroll is shown in the background of the painting, while a caryatid column on the portico outside creates a dark silhouette against the dome of Florence Cathedral in the background. Napoleon’s sister Elisa, (born Maria Anna in 1777) was made the queen of the new state of Etruria in Tuscany in 1808. Napoleonic style busts of the emperor’s sisters resemble idealized female busts representing muses and female goddesses recently uncovered in archaeological excavations in Italy. Canova’s Muse, owned by Stolberg, can also be compared with these and it appears to have been directly inspired by classical models displayed in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. Canova’s Muse was also the model for his official portrait bust of Elisa’s sister, Caroline Bonaparte Murat (1813) (Museo Napoleonico, Rome).40

The ability of ideal beauty in sculpture to suggest eternal values in the face of tyranny is also echoed by Byron, who later visited the salon of Countess d’Albrizzi in Venice and viewed Canova’s bust Helen (1812) (see Fig. 1-10) in her collection. Like Stolberg’s muse, it relies on the classical lexicon and reinterprets privileged signifiers in a liberal democratic context.

39 Alberta Campitelli and Anna Paola Agati, The Casina delle Civette at Villa Torlonia Guide (Roma: Electa, 2007), 32–77; “Works of the Casino Nobile, Museums of the Villa Torlonia,” Musei in , Roma, IT: http://www.museivillatorlonia.it/it/casino_nobile/tutte_le_opere_del_casino_nobile . 40 Worley, Louise Stolberg’s Florentine Salon, 167–214. The Legacy of Napoleon I in Italy and the Emerging Anglo-Italian Style 21

As a muse, it has the power to inspire, and at the same time define the parameters of tyranny through classical references invoked by contemporary poets like Foscolo. Countess Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi (1760–1836) (Fig.1-7) was called the Venetian de Staël by Byron,41 while Foscolo referred to her as a “lover for five days, a friend for a lifetime.” She was known for her political intrigues that rivalled the revolutionary Carbonari, who sought to free Italy from foreign domination. Her portrait was painted by Vigée-LeBrun in 1792, and Canova’s bust of Helen (1812) (collection of the Palazzo Albrizzi, Venice), which she commissioned, is thought to be a likeness of her. According the Lee, she entertained leading artists and authors at her Venetian salon, including Staël, Byron, Foscolo, Canova, Vinzeno Monti, and Ippolito Pindemonte.42 Albrizzi’s Retratti (1807) consisted of literary sketches and portraits by Vivant Denon of the famous authors who attended her salon, including Byron and Alfieri.43 Albrizzi’s bust of Helen by Canova inspired Byron’s short poem:

In this beloved marble view Above the works and thoughts of Man, What Nature could, but would not, do, And Beauty and Canova can! Beyond Imagination’s power, Beyond the Bard’s defeated art, With Immortality her dower, Behold the Helen of the heart! 44

Byron also mentions to Murray that he visited the Venus de Medici and Canova’s Venus Italica in Florence (Fig. 5-35) (commissioned to replace the Venus de Medici (Fig. 5-36) in Florence during its confiscation by Napoleon), and “returned drunk with ideal beauty.”45 By contrast, Michelangelo’s Tombs of the Medici consisted of “frippery” and “expensive stones, to commemorate 50 rotten and forgotten carcasses.” Likewise, Byron considered Alfieri’s tomb in Santa Croce to be “overloaded” since a portrait bust would have sufficed.

41 Letter to Thomas Moore (December 14, 1816). 42 Vernon Lee, “The Academy of the Arcadi,” Fraser's Magazine 18 (103) (1878): 33–59. 43 Susan Dalton. “Searching for Virtue: Physiognomy, Sociability, and Taste in Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi's ‘Ritratti’,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 40 (1) (2006): 85–108. 44 John Gibson, who was trained by Canova, also created a version of Helen ca. 1825–30. Letter from Byron to John Murray (November 25, 1816) in Lord Byron, With Byron in Italy, ed. Anna Benneson McMahan (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1906), 10. 45 Letter to John Murray (April 26, 1817). Byron, With Byron in Italy, 31. 22 Chapter One

As a liberal intellectual in Italy, Byron also repeated the steps taken by Stolberg and Staël, and the previous generation who supported Italian freedom. His assessment of art and revolution in Italy established the ironic tone followed later by Hawthorne in his French and Italian Notebooks. For example, Byron refers to Santa Croce as the Westminster Abbey of Italy, and expresses his distaste for the “long wigs of English numskulls upon Roman bodies in the statuary of the reigns of Charles, William and Anne.”46

Canova’s sculpture of Napoleon’s sister, Pauline Borghese as Venus (1804–8) (see Fig. 1-9) (Borghese Museum, Rome) symbolizes the sisters’ ambitions as heads of state seeking to impose the Bonaparte dynasty on Europe by ascending the thrones of Italy. Pauline’s commission coincided with the imperial coronation of Napoleon and Josephine at Notre Dame in Paris in 1804. Canova’s sculpture was placed in the Room of Helen and Paris in the Casino Borghese at the Villa Borghese. This room was closely connected with the ongoing collecting activities of the Borghese family. Gavin Hamilton was among the artists employed to refurbish the villa and acquire new collections from ongoing excavations. Hamilton painted the ceiling of the room with scenes included the Judgement of Paris.47 The iconography of Venus acquired political associations with the occupation of Italy. Venus had become a virtual European icon by the early nineteenth century referenced in neoclassical versions and inspired by ongoing excavations in Italy. She personified taste, ideal beauty, and fine art. She was also closely associated with the of aesthetics which underlies the first major art historical studies of the classical style by Johann Joachim Winckelmann.

Napoleon’s sisters left an indelible imprint on the history of the nineteenth century, which Anglo-Italian authors and artists responded to. Elise and Caroline demonstrated their acumen in state administration, but more importantly they left behind a legacy of art which rivalled the grandeur of their brothers. The portrayal of women in the Napoleonic era in art and literature ranges from the erotic nude to fictional heroine to the state portraits of aristocrats and politicians, and their wives and children. Ironically, this stylistic tradition would continue to characterize the Anglo- Italian style in the representation of women. The court portraits of the Napoleonic queens of Italy reinforced the roles of women as both administrators and dynastic founders. In fact, the dichotomy between the

46 Ibid., 31–2. 47 Paola Mangia, Canova: Artists and Collectors: a Passion for Antiquity (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2009), 21–56.